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20060111 Wednesday January 11, 2006

 Computer game generation gap...

My 5 year old son is slowly getting into computer games. He's actually pretty good at driving games inparticular now, he's faster than my wife around a simulated Brands Hatch in a Honda Civic....

Just for fun I thought I'd introduce him to a couple of classic arcade games: Pacman and Asteroids...

Well, Pacman he got immediately, but he was totally stumped by asteroids. He watched me play it and I noticed he was giving me one of his "Dad why are you being so dumb?" looks... I asked him what the problem was.

"Dad, why are you shooting the clouds?"



I guess he's got a point!

By contrast, one of the guests at our Christmas party was an elderly (80 year old) major who used to fly Spitfires in the war (WWII). I happened to mention I had a copy of Combat flight simulator on a PC upstairs (with a force feedback joystick and pedals) and I could tell the old boy was itching for a go...

One thing led to another and we set up a proper multiplayer deathmatch. A few of the young 'playstation generation' were also up for a blast or two. So it became young versis old over Biggin hill, or atleast a reasonable facsimile thereof.



The result? Codgers 15, Whippersnappers 0. Our old major had lost none of his guile in the air and kicked some serious teenage butt, and they were trying hard. I think that did more for community relations around our way than anything else ever. The local kids had serious respect for him after that and, dare I say it, probably learn't something about the war in the process.

And it was fun watching the teenage bravado dissolve rather quickly into gasps of dismay followed by grudging respect and finally sincere admiration. There's no school like the old school! ;-)

( Jan 11 2006, 03:28:33 PM GMT / Jan 11 2006, 03:11:25 PM GMT ) Permalink Comments [1]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/Drew/entry/classic_computer_games

Comments:

D'you know, I find that Spitfire story strangely reassuring. I'm impressed that the lack of balance/proprioception feedback didn't prove to be an obstacle (it's my usual excuse for being caned at driving games by my offspring).

Posted by Robin Wilton on January 13, 2006 at 05:41 PM GMT #

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